Monday, 27 February 2017

There are many, many castles, keeps and towers in the
Eclipsed Kingdom, but three above all are emblematic of that nations character,
madness, faith and power. So long as these three still stand the Eclipsed
Kingdom itself will still exist.

The Infinite Cathedral

In the exact centre of the Eclipsed Kingdom, and
therefore in the centre of the world, directly under the black formlessness of
God as he blots out the sun, and therefore at the centre of the Universe, is
the Infinite Cathedral.

Here is the seat of the Black Pope; Pontifex Nigrum in Tenebras Exteriores. Here is the centre for
worship and pilgrimage for a universal faith. Truly and literally Universal for
not only on this world is the Gospel of Azathoth spread.

The Cathedral itself squats like a triple-lobed beast. In
the centre, just below God, is the Basilica of
Nyralthotep. Spreading out in three giant limbs are the infinite naves
of the Cathedral. These vast buildings send out buttresses like tentacles into the
earth and, though every surface is corrugated with towers, steeples, belfry’s
and sometimes entire sub-churches, which obscure the shape of the Cathedral
when seen up-close, from a distance the three naves can be seen plunging into
the ground like vast curling roots.

The Monks of St Culix have explained the shape of the
Cathedral in the following way, though few possess the wits to follow them;

By the grace of god it is a shape with one pole and no
antipole, with one surface and no edge, with three separate limbs yet they are
one.

Like this, but a Cathedral.

To stand in the centre of the Cathedral, before the
throne of the Black Pope, is to stand where three gigantic naves meet. From
inside the naves seem utterly straight, with no turn, bow or shift of
orientation. Each one proceeds off into the distance as far as the eye can see.

The wise have said that if a member of the faithful
begins walking down one of the naves, they will return to the point where they
began without turning either right or left. This pilgrimage has tested many,
for in the distance of the naves, the windows grow dark, the air cold, and
then, after a time, the stained glass is lit by the terrible light of alien
suns and the pilgrims encountered may be those from other worlds.

This, but forever.

The crypts of the Infinite Cathedral are likewise without
end and these form the prison in which are held
the most powerful and significant of the enemies of the faith. Also
within these crypts are the souls and intelligences of those of the Clergy of
the Church who have grown too weak to possess their next body and now wander
without flesh.

The monks of St Culix have said that the Cathedral itself
is slowly growing, relative to the world in which it is embedded, curling
itself deeper and deeper into the earth yet always curling back upon itself.

It is here that the Cardinals of the Faith take their
whispered instruction from the Black Pope, here that the Orders of the Holy
Inquisition make their base. It is here that the power and glory of god is at
its greatest. It is here that Azathoth himself will first incarnate himself on
this world, when that time finally arrives, as it inevitably must.

The Silent City Of The Sleeping King

Before the great revelation and the coming of Azathoth,
this castle and the city below were the centre of a golden age and the seat of
a burgeoning Feudal World-Empire. Now they are the quietest place on earth,
home of the Ordinis Carcere, the
Silent Knights, and of the Dreaming Court of the Sleeping King.

He is still enthroned there, still with the thirteen
poisoned daggers of the first Cardinals of Azathoth in his back, still
sleeping, and kept asleep only by the endless insane tuneless piping of the
chained and maddened bards who ring his court.

If the piping should ever stop, the King will wake and
Azathoth will come for him. All will end.

And it will end, but until that day, he sleeps here.
Around him are the selves of his dream. His court. They are undying vision-people
conjured from his sleeping mind, as strange, incoherent, protean, beautiful,
meaningless and meaningful as dreams themselves. And just as everyone we meet
within a dream is us, all of the court are the King.

They dance and speak to each other, sometimes talking
idiot poetry, sometimes murmuring only the forms of words like the background
players in a masque, sometimes rambling mundanities or dangerously sparking
into something near consciousness, their eyes fixing on an individual like the
manic targets of a mad beggar. The Fool especially, if he is present, his jokes
and bawds sometimes seem to hover frighteningly close to something like
awareness of the real world.

Some dream selves fade in and out over a matter of
minutes, never to be seen again, some are common characters, often returning
albeit in different shapes and forms. Some are monsters, some nightmares, some
beauties, some heroes.

The king has been sleeping for a long time and his dream
has grown strange indeed.

The only person here who is not a dream, yet who seems
like one is his half sister, the Cambion Sorceress Esmerillion.

Nevertheless, this is still the centre of the Temporal
Government for the Eclipsed Kingdom. Every Baron must swear loyalty to the King
and they must all come here, at least once, to do it.

Not all of them make it out. Some go mad due to the
pipes. Some are killed by the Dreaming court for impossible dreamlike reasons;
because they remind an imaginary person of a thought, because they have the
wrong sign in their name, because they are too small or too large, because they
have a look, because they do not have a look.

Others are given quests and orders by a member of the
Dreaming court which cannot be completed. "Become your own son",
"Bring me the colour blue" "Climb a tower in a ladies eye and
bring back the treasure she does not have". Though these are but the
dreams of the King, to ignore them might be seen as ignoring the will of the
King, and the will of Azathoth, who's prophet he is, and many high lords have
been forced to set out on incoherent maddened quests to impossible places, for
impossible things, before they can claim their high position.

Beyond the throne room are the silent halls.

Though they were not always of this kind, over the
centuries, the Ordinis Carcere have
changed and adapted the shapes of the rooms and the nature of the walls.

Perhaps this was simply to avoid the terrible music of
the pipes, perhaps it was to more deeply fulfil their oaths of silence, but
they have slowly encrusted the halls and rooms of the Castle with strange
repeated shapes and bizarre angles until, in every room, in every corridor,
there is absolutely no ambient noise.

The halls of the castle are so quiet that those entering
say they can hear their own blood pumping in their veins, that they can hear
their own scalp moving over their skull. Any noise made is eaten by the strange
additions to the walls and ceilings, as soon as a door is closed a scream
inside a room cuts out as if a switch had been turned.

The Knights themselves make absolutely no sound whatever
the circumstances, moving through the dead-quiet halls like ghosts.

It is here, and in the utterly silent dungeons that the Ordinis Carcere organise and disperse
their forces, ranging all over the Eclipsed Kingdom and beyond in search of
people to imprison, for whatever reason can be found, and searching also always
for bards, to drag them back to the Court of the Sleeping King and set them to
piping, for the bards themselves wear out quite quickly and become little more
than dried husks after only a few days.

Down within the dungeons are the most significant
prisoners of the Carcere, (those not
surrendered to the Infinite Cathedral). Many of these are themselves prison
breakers and escape artists. The Ordinis
Carcere loathes and despises these people especially and makes a point of
hunting them down and securing them absolutely. They are chained in cages in
the centre of soundproof rooms.

The Castle itself stands on a promontory of volcanic
rock. Its multiple battlements tumble down the sides of the stone into the
roofs and pinnacles of the Silent City.

Once it was the home of the greatest craftsmen, artists,
poets and lords of all the world. Though it is half-sunken in ruin and utterly
quiet, this is still where the Eclipsed Kingdom holds the best of its artisans,
scriveners, scribes and the small mercantile class which the Kingdom still
cannot do without.

I know he's basically the patron saint of the OSR at this point, but what can you do?

Very little can be found in the city without first
knowing what you are looking for, the centres of ruined buildings may still
hold secret life, unlikely alleys or locked gates may disguise secret homes or
places of work. Somewhere in this city a handful of people may still be getting
very quietly drunk, or playing a game of silent chess.

The burgers of the town and True Citizens of the Silent
City have all had their tongues removed and communicate only by written or
gestured sign. Long ago this may have been in sympathy with, or by order of the
Ordinis Carcere, but by now it is
simply a ritual and proud sign of citizenship and of voting rights in the
city’s silent council.

The people speak in whispers, if they speak at all.

The city itself is, in effect, an extension of the
prison, and of the castle. At night the streets near the Castle are spread with
quiet white sand by silent churls and any sign of a footprint before dawn is
investigated as a capital crime until the culprit is found. The Carcere are maddened by the idea of one
of their most special prisoners escaping, especially since they might well help
more prisoners to escape elsewhere! Many citizens of the city have double roles
as servants of the Carcere and report
back to them in a complex network of informers.

Still, there are conspiracies and lies everywhere. The
Kingdom has many enemies and even within the kingdom the various orders,
factions, baronies, families and lines plot continually against each other for
power. Some half-elven lords and ladies are actually plotting against
themselves, with one half being either unaware of what the other half is doing,
or simply out of deranged mania. Some sorcerers may be plotting against future
or former selves, or alternate versions of themselves.

The Castle Of The Fissure King

Of all the Keeps of the Eclipsed Kingdom, the Castle of
the Fissure King is perhaps the strangest and most mutable. Though the Infinite
Cathedral twists back on itself in directions impossible to perceive, it at
least has a reasonably stable outer form. The Castle of the Fissure King seems
to change position, shape, nature and relation according to the situation of
those who seek it.

·It is always the home of the Calicem Servi, the Grail Knights.

·It is always the resting place of the Grail
itself.

·It is always somewhere in, or on, the Fissure.

Yet for all this, exactly what it is seems to vary with the observer.

Some describe it simply as a vertical castle cut into the
walls of the fissure. Some as a single keep standing upon an impossible
pinnacle of stone. Some as a kind of bridge-palace crossing the Fissure itself,
or as two palaces mirrored, rising like recurved horns from the walls of the
Fissure on each side and meeting in the middle. Some as a beautiful and
classical castle poised on a mesa or hill in the valley of the Fissure itself.
Some as a mansion on an outcrop of stone with a river passing beneath it.

The Fissure itself changes in its form depending on those
who seek it, or who seek to cross it. On maps it is described, by most, as a
deep, vast valley on the borders between the Eclipsed Kingdom and the wasteland
beyond. But any map seeking to describe the Fissure will quickly tear or break,
and the tear itself will be at exactly the place that the Fissure is shown in
the map. It cannot be represented.

For those who have sought it out it has sometimes been a
huge, verdant, valley with a river running through it, full of forests and incredible
animals, even the ruins of ancient peoples and lost civilisations. For others
it has been the edge of the world, a black cliff proceeding endlessly down into
an unknown netherworld, the floor lost in howling mists driven by screaming
winds that pile over the rim like tornadoes. For others it has been a deep
crevasse, almost impossible to cross, but on the other side, a mirror world
exactly like the side just left, or did the Fissure somehow turn them back on
their path and return them to their origin? For some it has been a turn or
curve in the world itself, where gravity twisted, as if the skin of the world
turned over like the bent page of a book and continued on the other side, upside
down. For some a rift valley, filled with lava and sulphuric gas with the black
castle of the Fissure King rising out of the bubbling poison. Some find it the Cliffside
border of a mighty black ocean that appears on no map. Some say it can only be
approached from one side and that whatever side it is approached from is the
only side that it has.

To seek out the Fissure King is to enter the realm of
spirit and of faith. Those who are strong with faith in Azothoth may find their
way easily, if their faith is true. Those who lack True Belief, or who deny his
Truth may find impossible challenges and situations. Yet sometimes the Fissure
will test the faithful and forgive the heretic.

Wednesday, 22 February 2017

This is my attempt to put together a timeline of the case
against Zak Smith/Sabbath. I tried to do so, where possible, using only
verifiable links that are publicly available for anyone to access.

In situations where harassment is alleged, its very difficult to draw the line between
giving exact information and opening people up to potential anonymous abuse. If
I don’t give names and links for a lot of these things the whole thing becomes
an exercise in redaction. If I name a lot of names then I could easily be
accused of ‘directing harassment’ towards those parties.

I’ve tried to use only links that are still publicly
available and to name individuals only when necessary to precisely describe
what happened in an incident.

PLEASE. Do not contact any of the people in the links
below in any kind of negative or harassing way. It would be better not to
contact them at all. No-one in these circles is open to persuasion and nothing
will be gained. Just read what they wrote.

it should be noted (as a quick google of my name will confirm) that I am financially (through Maze of the Blue Medusa) and socially connected to Zak, so you should read with that in mind.

My overview of the chronology is at the bottom.

(Also, apologies to anyone sane from outside the culture that has to read through this.)

October 15th 2008 – Zak Starts His Blog

It's called 'Playing D&D With Porn Stars. You can see the opening post here;

Act One.

The Long Build Up/The Sex Wars

Feb 2010 to Dec 2013

This probably has roots in forum arguments in the past but it enters the public record in February 2010 in the Canon Puncture Incident and proceeds through to the Desborough Rape Threat Accusations of December 2013.

This period is characterised by the relatively long periods between each incident and the fact that opponents and arguments don't always carry over or fold into the next incident. Alienation and anger build up slowly, are sometimes diffused, but don't go away.

Most are triggered by arguments over sex and responses to Zaks gaming group (mainly women, mainly models).

·The Numenera Succubus Incident - Again, triggered by the presence of sexual materials in the game.

·The James Desborough Rape Threat Accusation - Desborough angers many of the same people with his arguments about the validity of rape in games, is then accused of making rape threats.

February 2010 – The Canon Puncture Incident

The hosts of the Canon Puncture Podcast talk about Zaks
game with his group. They say some things that Zak regards as condescending
towards the girls in the group, Zak requests an apology and the hosts apologise.
This gets spoken about on story-games.com and Zak comes in to describe the
situation. You can read that thread here;

February 11th 2011 – The Hyung Tae Kim Incident

Zak disagrees and the two of them get into it. Zak calls
her a prude. Later, on March 10th 2015, Kreider posts her own
chronology of her interactions with Zak, you can find it below.

I've been asked to point out that Zak wasn't invited into this thread, he just turned up, which is true, he hasn't been invited into any of these threads, but neither has anyone else? They are almost all public posts or they wouldn't be available to link here. This has been described as a scary incident to me.

Well, take a look for yourself.

December 2011 – The Maxim Article

The US magazine Maxim carries an article about Zak and his
group. You can read the article itself here;

This was the best evidence I
could find of the origins of an important disagreement that, like everything in
this chronology, forms resentments and hatreds that pile on into the next thing. If anyone has any publicly
available links describing or showing what happened then let me know.

February 2012 – 'Confessions of a Dungeon Master' thread on Storygames,

This is an interesting argument over a game transcript from 1980 by John Eric Holmes.

This starts out as being between Luke Crane, creator of Burning Wheel and Zak, a lot of classic behaviours are exhibited here and, like a lot of times in this chronology it's based on very different perceptions of, and reactions to, a potentially sexual situation.

Zaks opinion of Luke Crane comes up again four years later in an April 2016 post below.

February 29th 2012 – Zak Encounters Somethingawful

Zak says that the enmity between him and the
Somethingawful forum dates from this contact. In his own words;

“The backstory on this is an enmity with Something Awful
beginning with me attempting to talk to them about their extreme statements
here, years after noticing they took Mandy to task for having extension cords
on her wish list”

This adds to the enmity between Zak and Somethingawful
which he has said is the engine behind the Tom Hatfield Failforward article in
July 2014.

August 3rd 2013 – The Numenera Succubus Incident

Game Writer Monte Cook
releases his game Numenera. This game includes rules for a Science
Fiction Succubus. This causes a massive scandal and argument (google “Numenera
Succubus”) especially on RPG.NET where the thread runs for 561 posts;

He's banned by Ettin, which is a name you will see several more times in this chronology.

It's interesting at this point to take a look at the different viewpoints. Here is part of the argument for the ban;

"You serially derail sexism threads with bad-faith arguments. You insist that nobody can ever make generalizations about anything ever (even when they're not), then post generalizations. You pull out arguments that boil down to "words don't mean things" like that's ever been constructive outside the philosophy forum. You're passive-aggressive and occasionally condescending, you post anecdotes as facts, you tell people that things can't be sexist because you know ~females~ who would disagree. You're convinced that you're always right and refuse to consider otherwise, or at least that's the only explanation I can think of for why you keep making up strawmen to dismiss people who disagree with you (cf. the pass-agg "stop assuming all women are alike!" business, asserting that feminist game bloggers and others who disagree with you must be "conservative", every time you say "Tipper Gore" ever). You don't take anything that isn't agreement for an answer, and will argue in circles about it instead of making the positive contributions you could be until you get bored or someone makes you stop."

And here, from the ban itself, is the mods example of Zak doing this;

"Nobody does this research or even seems to ask for it. And they should.

That this idea is going to turn away more women than it brings in has no experimental evidence behind it.

That this idea is going to make folks' attitudes towards women worse has no experimental evidence behind it.

So if your only case against the trope is Monte is being accidentally sexist (via effect) it's pretty much accusing someone of sexism with no evidence.

The idea that this is even a sexist trope in Monte's hands is based on claims it will have a sexist effect. It requires them to be true. It doesn't seem fair or right to do that in absence of anybody trying to test it.

Me, here's who I can test: 2000 blog readers and G+ people. 4 figures of "I Hit It With My Axe" fans on Facebook. Mandy's fans which are like in the 5 figures. We ask what keeps women from gaming: The data we get has nothing to do with content and everything to do with a social environment of weird controlling nerd boys.

But, hey, that's a biased sample

Somebody do some research, rather than assuming all women are like the ones in your environment.

The closest thing we have in terms of experimental data on anything moving the needle of gaming concerning women is the advent of Vampire which proves:

Tim Truman illustrations of sexy vampires --male and female--attract female gamers, a lot of whom want to dress like them.

Folks who run conventions and publishing companies and forums should try to do a better job by publishers, designers and women by actually basing claims about what is and isn't bad for the community on testing stuff."

August 5th 2013 – Zaks 'open letter' to rpg.net

In response to this perma-ban, Zak posts an 'open letter to the managers of rpg.net;

If you look at the comments, waaay at the bottom you will see Shanna Germain, Cooks partner and co-creator talking about her reaction to the arguments made against her and the game.

This is also the first time I recall hearing the name Shannon Appelcline in this history. It will come up again in Febuary 2017. You will see that below.

December 16th 2013 – The James Desborough Rape Threat Accusation

About 10 months prior to this Ben Lehman publicly accused
James Desborough, RPG writer, of being "Someone who threatens their
critics with rape". Several people +1 this post.

Desborough has been involved in culture-war arguments
with this faction for some time and, in my opinion, persistently trolls them. The verbal violence between these groups is intense. Just google "james desborough in defence of rape" or any combination of those words to take a look at the shitstorm.

John Stavropoulus an RPG writer not aligned with
Desborough’s faction or opinions, checks up on the claim that he threatened people with rape and finds no
evidence to back them up.

Zak in his own words; “The short of Jon's research is this accusation turned out to be
bullshit even though 80some people +1ed it and it got shared all over the RPG
internet.

Now Jon didn't name names, because he "doesn't want a witchhunt".
Which is respectable. But I'm not Jon and I do think the RPG community as a
whole deserves an apology from every single one of these people for confusing and
distorting a very real and very serious issue of real violence that actually
affects peoples' lives.”

He names names. Some people retract their +1’s, others do
not. I’m not going to provide a link to that post but it is still up.

Zaks naming of names on this issue is used as evidence of
harassment from this point on, in particular as evidence of him having a ‘list
of enemies’.

Many of the people on this list appear elsewhere in this chronology, almost always as opponents of Zak I think. I can't really point out who because, like I said, its alleged to be an act of harassment or directing harassment towards those parties so if I repeat the same names then this chronology also becomes harassment.

July 6th 2014 – Eric Haddock Asks For Evidence on G+

This is relevant largely because of this quote from Sean Patrick Fannon which gets a blog response from Zak later;

"The Internet is screaming with the harm caused, Zak; this very conversation wouldn't be happening if you'd not actively hurt and pissed off a great many people. You know this as well as I do. You've simply chosen to deafen yourself to it, demanding bullet point accounting that you can then dismiss or refute as you choose.

This is one of your tactics. You ask others to present evidence so you can play your lawyer roleplaying game. You have no actual interest in evaluating your actions or your impact. You are resolutely convinced you cannot possibly be wrong.

You are telling me what I need to know here. You don't acknowledge the harm you've caused, nor your capacity to cause it. Anyone who claims you've harmed them is Swine (or a liar, or worse). I am disinclined to spend any more time on this, since it is clear you've made your choice to stand on the treacherous ground of your own making.

As for being discredited... I think not. Your refusal to give even the slightest ground, to acknowledge even the minimal amount of flaw or fault, delineates your narcissistic arrogance in clear, bold colors.

There was an opportunity here, Zak. You pissed it away. You've discredited yourself, sir.

My credit will remain intact, thanks."

July 7th 2014 – My Defence of Zak

As the abuse of Zak intensifies I write this post about
him in defence;

July 7th 2014 – The Pigfucker Post

A few hours after I post my defence of Zak, I wake up to
find this article in which he lays out his own (by my standards, highly
aggressive) policy on internet arguments, and also accuses someone of
(metaphorically) fucking a pig;

July 9th 2014 – The “The Internet is Screaming” Post

This is really interesting. It kicks off with the quote from Sean Patrick Fannon above, then leads into an (I think we would have to say alleged) message from Zeea, who I think I recall from the rpg.net threads about Zak. I will include a little bit here;

So, I've spent a few hours doing as much research as I can, and I've talked to folks some more.I'm not going to equivocate. People made accusations against you without proof, the accusations got amplified and distorted and repeated through the Telephone Game effect, and I bought into it when I shouldn't have.................I don't think anyone I talked to privately is intentionally lying about this. I think they believe it. But perceptions color memories, as does hearing the same event discussed by multiple people, and some of things look a bit stretched by this point. I can't base an opinion on stretchy-looking facts."

Zeea then (according to this post) retracts their statement based on the 'outing' controversy of July 26th (see below).

July 2014 – The David Hill Death Threats

I think it’s about this time that David Hill, game
designer, claims that he has received death threats, including the names of his
children’s teachers and phone calls to his address. These claims go on to
become a major part of the case against Zak.

The only publicly available link I could find in which David Hill repeats
them is here in post 49 of this forum
thread;

July 26th 2014 – The
‘Outing’ Incident

This is where Mandy, Zaks girlfriend talks about some of
the trolls attacking her and Zak and uses a variety of openly available aliases
for someone who turned out to be trans. You can read the post here;

Like every archive in the chronology this link is only frozen from the point of this blog post.

Going forward, this incident forms one of the core pieces
of evidence against Zak in future arguments. If you read someone saying that he
outs trans people as a form of retaliation or revenge it is probably referring
to this incident.

The case against is I think that Zak knew this person was trans and linked two of their names to out them.

The case for the defence is that Zak and Mandy had argued with this person many times, knowing them only by non-gendered internet handles,and had no idea what gender they were, or that the handles referred to identities with different genders, when the two names were linked.

Zak in his own words;

“The person was not revealed to be trans until
Wordmercenary/Tom Hatfield said she was. It was not public knowledge so how
could Mandy or I have known?”

July 31st 2014 – The Failforward Article

This article is where the real bomb goes off. From this
point on the situation massively intensifies. The article is shared by a very
large range of people and is cited in nearly every major attack on Zak from this
point on.

July 31st 2014 – The First Dongion Accusation

The Dongion is a blog posting sarcastic commentary about the, well I can only really call them the 'social justice' clique. Zak has always claimed that he was not the writer of the Dongion but has said that he 'takes responsibility' for it based on the fact that it is in his blogroll

This tumblr reblog of the failforward article is the earliest I have been able to find that links the Dongion blog to Zak. It also links the Dongion to the Outing Incident.

Act Three; The Small Wars

January 2015 to August 2016

This is a series of spot fires or low-level conflicts based around particular incidents. During this period we get mutual counter-accusations, the Ennies walkout and the Magpie Games Incident. So far as I know the accusations against Zak don't widen in scope or intensify, but no-ones position changes. This is something like a 'Cold War' period.

Inexact Date but probably Jan 2015 – The Ettin Dongion Accusation

Ettin, the rpg.net mod, accuses Zak of running the Dongion, which he calls a harassment blog andwhich you can find on his tumblr;

March 10th 2015 – Anna Krieder Posts Her History With Zak

Which is a chronology of her interactions with Zak from
her perspective, so now you have a chronology in your chronology.

It's quite interesting and I recommend going through it if you have the time and if you want to see the whole fucking cavalcade through the eyes of someone on the opposite side. It's almost like the mirror/antiverse version of this post with many of the same events from an entirely different perspective.

Amongst other things it locates their first contact in January 2011 and the the opening of hostilities to the storygames thread in April 2012, not the Hyung Tae Kim Incident in February 2011 as I have above.

March 13th 2015 – The Sampat Mob Assault Accusation

A brief moment of levity here to give everyone a break. Elizabeth Sampat accuses Zak of riling up a “mob to the
point that I was assaulted in front of witnesses.”

August 2015 – Red and Pleasant Land Wins At The Ennies

Zaks book Red and Pleasant Land wins multiple awards at
the Ennies. Stacy Dellorfano of Contessa, the feminist game organisation gives a speech to accept the award in
his absence and a few people walk out in protest.

Zak's defence, from the comments;"I am blocked from David's social media, it is still public information available to anyone not logged in.Criticism is not harassment. David Hills Star wars problem is he hadn't seen it when he made his years worth of irrational accusations about it."
Both sides get deep into it in the comments of this post if you want to read more.

April 11th 2016 – "Why There's No Tabletop RPG Theory

In this post by Zak he goes further into his numerous and deep disagreements with the Storygames community.

I was asked to bring this in becasue people think Luke Crane is misrepresented in this post, and in particular becasue of the request for people to contact Lukes friends which apparently people did try to do.

It has stuff on Luke (half way down), Cam Banks, Ettin and a few other people. You can read one of the interactions with Luke Crane in a storygame thread entry for 2012 above.

August 26th 2016 – Zak Calls His Critics Psychotics

Also knuckle-draggers, edition-warriors and sociopaths. This is claimed to be an act of harassment by some (see the comments to this post). You can read it here;

He is accused of defending Zak and therefore aiding a
harasser. All the usual people arrive to do all the usual things.

Peoples responses and attitudes to this article become
another form of contention which is carried forwards into future arguments. I mean, come on, if you've read this far you know how it works by now.

This has been described, (in the comments below) as "an accusation that his critics fabricate and distort facts due to being mentally ill. I would argue this is a clear attack, and in the context of the previous posts can be understood as continued harrasment "

August 4th 2016 – Zak on Anna Krieder

You've seen Anna Krieders chronology from March 10th 2015, now you get to read Zaks, equally long, response to that. And yes all of this is slowly killing me

He gave me a response with enough detail to persuade me
that it was likely true. But;

·Even if true, it still indicates questionable
behaviour. Zak knew the person using the identity, treated it as a joke and did
nothing to prevent them.

·It’s utterly unverifiable to any neutral
observer.

I've since been contacted by people known to me who also think Zak was directly behind the SApplecine identity on reddit.

This, more than anything else, damages Zak in the eyes of many people.

Also, if anyone else ever did this to him he would absolutely, unquestionably, never forgive them and would refer to them as an identity thief till the end of time.

The Avery Situation

Zaks argument is that;

·This name was chosen with no particular
reference to anyone real.

·The only opponent of his it could be named after
is Avery Alder, the creator of Monsterhearts and they had no significant
contact until the Magpie Games Incident, July 2016. He says the script for the
game was finished and locked before that point.

·He regards the Avery character as a hero in the
game, someone witty and funny and cool who saves your life, it would make no
sense for him to name her after an enemy.

·The Avery character is directly based on Zaks
(trans) friend Bailey Jay, with her approval.

I'll editorialise a little more than usual here. Claiming making a trans character a sketchy hyper-sexualised slut as an act of aggression seems a bit mad to me since Zak is a sketchy hyper-sexualised slut and so are most of the people he likes and he, and they, have all been pretty open in both speech and deed about how they think this is a pretty great way to live. It's a bit like saying the Pope wrote a a book and condemned the villain by making them a catholic.

February 19th 2017 – Stacey Dellorfano Responds

Stacy Dellorfano, who runs the feminist Contessa event,
responds to the accusations against Zak and describes the various different
kinds of harassment and abuse she has received, sometimes from the same people
who are opposed to Zak, whilst trying to make Contessa a thing;

Which, as you can see, has 358 replies as of the moment of this entry. So far as I can see the accusations are all things covered so far.

August 3rd 2017 - 'Art and the Artist' on RPG.NET

Were back!

Thread opens with this; "If he was just some asshole, I'd still buy his books, because I believe in supporting a skilled person if even they kinda suck. But this stuff about driving people out of the industry, calling people's phones to harass them, targeting their families, it sounds super skeevy and crazy.

I'm not trying to start any fights here, but can someone give me some links or information on the above? Being an abravise person who use's sock accounts, and makes some dumb blog where you talk shit all day, that's shitty and all, but it's not really enough to send me over the line of "I'm not doing to buy your books".

The Mods then ban all mention of Zak. Then I get kicked off (2nd 3-day ban)

Since your previous ban, we've reviewed your posting history and noticed that you've been posting exclusively in threads discussing a permabanned friend of yours. Specifically, you've been trying to reframe these discussions around a blog post you wrote. Though you present your views as a reasonable, neutral foundation for discussion, your posting mostly consists of attacks on other users and anyone who disagrees with you. Some of these posts are simply drive-by speeches directed at hypothetical future lurkers, and don't engage with the discussion in any meaningful way.

You've made it clear that you have personal and financial reasons to continue this behavior, and have no intention of changing. After discussion, we've decided to formally topic ban you from discussing Zak Smith, including linking to blog posts discussing him. You're still free to promote and discuss any games you've worked together on, provided you focus on the games themselves. You're also free to discuss any other topic on RPGnet, and we hope you take this opportunity to find other threads you'd enjoy participating in.-------

Warnings serve as a reminder to you of the forum's rules, which you are expected to understand and follow.

August 15th 2017 - 4Chan False Identity Accusation

Based on the use of the phrase 'get at him' in this anti-Hill comment;

And this G+ thread you will remember from August 2014 (see above).

And including what I think is an accusation of Fascism?

I'm blocking all the commenting identities here to limit the emotional fallout but its all on a public and open twitter thread. I'm also going to repeat my request from the beginning of the post;

"PLEASE. Do not contact any of the people in the links below in any kind of negative or harassing way. It would be better not to contact them at all. No-one in these circles is open to persuasion and nothing will be gained. Just read what they wrote."

And if you are thinking; "Does this mean someone can publicly accuse me of Fascism and I can't publicly reply because my reply would be considered harassment?" Then yes, that is what it means. Those are the rules of the Culture War I'm afraid.

My Overview

My overview is that its fucked.

It's one of the most epic, intense, byzantine and overwhelming tragedies I've ever seen. Its like Moby Dick if there were about 20 whales all called Moby Dick (and this is not a comment on the weight of the people involved).

I mean holy fuck what a gargantuan and insane mess. It staggers the mind.

And its a tragedy in the classical sense I think. Everyone involved is way too deeply bound to their narrative to turn back or let go now. The only way is forward, forward to doom.

................................................................

As for its structure; we can see major responses and spikes whenever Zak is
found to have worked, or to be suspected of working with, a different gaming
company or group or whenever his popularity spikes. Firstly in the long build
up, many arguments come about from the 'Playing DnD With Porn Stars' Escapist
Series, which grew in popularity as it went on.

Then directly after he works on 5e we get the Summer of Hate.
Then the Ennies win. During the Magpie Games Incident Mark Diaz Truman has to
publicly state that he is not going to work with Zak after people allege that a
planned project with Zak is the reason for his post.

Then after Zak is linked to White Wolf, we get another
eruption and the lava is still flowing on that one. (Still continuing as of last edit.)

I had to close the comments as things were getting too crazy in there to keep track of. If anyone has new evidence or new accusations from a publicly available link then you can let me know on G+ or Facebook or Reddit. You can find my social media in the site reached by the link at the top right of the blog;

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